Pulteney had some powerful allies. The King, as we know, hated his son, the Prince of Wales; the Prince of Wales hated his father. No reconciliation got up between them could be lasting or real. The father and son hardly ever met except on the occasion of some great public ceremonial. The standing quarrel between the Sovereign and his heir had the effect of creating two parties in political life, one of which supported the King and the King's advisers, while the other found its centre in the house of the Heir to the Throne. We shall see this condition of things re-appearing in all the subsequent reigns of the Georges. The ministry and their friends {257} were detested and denounced by those who surrounded the Prince of Wales; the adherents of the Prince of Wales were virtually proscribed by the King. Then, as at a later date in the history of the Georges, those who favored and were favored by the Prince were looking out with anxious hope for the King's death. When "the old King is dead as nail in door," then indeed each leading supporter of the new king believed he could say with Falstaff, "The laws of England are at my commandment; happy are they which have been my friends." Pulteney and his supporters were among the friends and favorites of the Prince of Wales; they constituted the Prince's party. The Prince's party was composed mainly of the men who were Tories but were not Jacobites, and of the Whigs who disliked Walpole or had been overlooked or offended by him, or who in sober honesty were opposed to his policy. In all these, and in a daily growing number of the people out-of-doors, Pulteney had his friends and Walpole his enemies.